Speaker 1: 0:03

Good morning. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Psalm 139 with me. I know we already read from this psalm this morning and I questioned should we read it again? And it's such a good psalm and I just feel like we should read it again. So I'm going to read it, and I just feel like we should read it again. So I'm going to read it and then we'll jump into the text this morning. Okay, this is Psalm 139.

Speaker 1: 0:34

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways, even before a word is on my tongue. Behold, o Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me.

Speaker 1: 0:58

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it If I say surely the darkness shall cover me and the light about me be night. Even the darkness is not dark to you. The night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you, for you formed my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me when, as yet, there were none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, o God. How vast is the sum of them. If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake and I'm still with you. Oh that you would slay the wicked. Oh God, oh, men of blood, depart from me. They speak against you with malicious intent. Your enemies take your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate you, oh Lord, and do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred. I count them, my enemies. Search me, o God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting, the word of the Lord. May the Lord bless the preaching and reading of his word through the empowering presence of his spirit.

Speaker 1: 2:48

I think it is a very normal human experience to desire to be known, and not just to be known but to be known truly as you are and appreciated for who you are. We have different personalities, we have different personalities, we have different interests and some of those interests align with others and some of those don't. And it can be kind of scary to put yourself out there because you might not align well with another person and that can be a little bit daunting, a little bit frightening. But we desire that. We desire to be known, we desire to be understood and loved and hopefully many of us have been able to experience that already. If you are like me, you were blessed to grow up in a household where your parents loved you, my mom loved me and I knew that my mom loved me and even when I did things bad, I knew that my mom loved me and hopefully you've been able to experience that as well being known and also being loved. But the world can also be cruel. The world can also be cruel and even in a good home or even with good friends and good family, you've probably still experienced the dangers of making yourself known to others. Maybe you as a young child kind of put yourself out there. Even this morning.

Speaker 1: 4:24

I have a one-year-old, theo, and I put on some music this morning and he just started dancing. You know, just, you know just, flawless, you know, and just, with no fear, no worries, just complete glee, complete happiness. And he is totally free to do that and feels no sense of holding himself back when he's in front of me. Yet even as a one-year-old he is reluctant to really express himself before other people. He feels comfortable with me and my wife, of course, and so with us. He's loud and he's joyful and he's giddy and he's crazy, but then in public he's not sure. He's loud and he's joyful and he's giddy and he's crazy, but then in public he's not sure. He's not sure whether he can trust the people around him and their unknowns to him and unknowns mean a variety of things, right, and sometimes being yourself in front of others can be not a good thing. Being yourself in front of others can be not a good thing.

Speaker 1: 5:25

And if we've made it past our high school years at some point I'm sure you've experienced putting yourself out there and being shunned because you put yourself out there and somewhere down the line you start to realize, maybe even at a younger age, I shouldn't put myself fully out there and I need to pick and choose who is safe and who I can let know who I really am, because certain people will not appreciate that. Certain people will get to know you but they will use what they know about you against you. I've come through a few moments of church hurt in my past and close friends who I thought were trustworthy, who I thought I could depend on and share myself to, and then somewhere down the line something snaps. They feel differently about you and suddenly what they did know about you becomes dangerous. What they knew about you becomes scary.

Speaker 1: 6:33

But yet I think we still desire that. We still desire to be known and we feel this tension of do I put myself out there? Do I intimately trust myself to a person or to people, trusting that they won't use what they know about me against me and that they'll appreciate what they know about me, that they'll understand my intentions and love me? And then on the other side, we experience a fear of vulnerability. I want to be known, but I fear being vulnerable. So do you pursue intimacy or do you pursue seclusion to hide yourself?

Speaker 1: 7:12

And I know that even in my relationship with my wife there have been moments where I hit this wall, where I am struggling with something and I freeze up and I don't want to share. I don't want to be intimate, because I've been hurt times in the past and I don't want to experience that hurt again. It's a natural thing for us to freeze up because of that hurt. It's a natural thing to not want to be hurt. I've been scared of other things in my life. I've been scared of dogs, but I'll tell you, I've never frozen up against a big dog the way I've frozen up and felt my body close down on me.

Speaker 1: 7:53

When I'm struggling with something and trying to be intimate, sometimes I feel like my mouth just wants to shut, my throat turns off and I cannot express myself. I cannot share myself to someone who I believe really loves me, because somewhere deep down in there, I'm afraid. Somewhere deep down in there, I'm afraid that even with this person who has known me for a long time, who has a track record of loving me, if they just knew this thing about me, then their perception of me would change. Then they wouldn't see me the same way anymore. If a person were to really know you entirely as you are, could that person know you fully and still love you, and I think there's enough good reason to think that with many people the answer would be no. Yeah, I can put on the face that I need to put on in this particular scenario, but if they were to see this other part of my life that goes contrary to that, if they were to feel the cognitive dissonance that I feel within myself, they wouldn't see me the same way and feel the same way about me anymore.

Speaker 1: 9:08

So who really knows us and who really still loves us while knowing us? It's something we need in life. That feeling of trust, that feeling of love, that feeling of safety is essential for goodness happiness. And what this psalm offers for us is a picture of God who knows the individual. This psalm is well-loved, and for good reason, and I think we'll find that it answers this heart question that we ask ourselves who really knows me and who knows me and still loves me? So let's look at this psalm. We'll look at it in kind of three parts. Our first part we'll kind of examine how the Lord knows the psalmist, how the Lord searches out the psalmist so as to know him more, and then, lastly, we'll see how the psalmist trusts himself to the Lord who knows him. So look at this first part in the first six verses it begins with this thesis statement that kind of summarizes the feeling of the psalm.

Speaker 1: 10:36

And you'll notice that this psalm, probably more than any other passage in scripture, kind of displays God at an individual relational level with his people. Many of the Psalms and many of the scriptures kind of display God's love for his people broadly, but this Psalm in particular is written in an individualistic manner in which the relationship that the psalmist has with God is not just the people of God and God, but it's actually the individual and God. And I think we need to understand that it's a both and that God loves us corporately but God also loves each and every one of us individually and knows us intricately. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit and when I rise, right these opposites. You discern my thoughts, even from far away. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Right, he's kind of displaying this kind of back and forth, even when you're sitting, even when you're standing, even when you're walking and when you're lying down, even when you're far away, in all these manners, god knows the individual.

Speaker 1: 11:48

The psalmist believes that about God, that God has searched for him and has known him at this individual level, that all of his ways, everything he does, is known by God, even before a word is on my tongue, you know it, right. You hem me in, you keep me close from behind me and from in front of me, and you lay your hand upon me, and then he kind of gives this little praise rant and we'll find this throughout our psalm today that he kind of pauses and takes a moment to just appreciate this about God. God's deep knowledge for the psalmist is something that the psalmist can praise God for. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high and I cannot attain it. And you'll notice that this word know is really central to what we have here. He's known, he's discerned, he's searched out, he's acquainted with. And for the psalmist that knowledge about God's knowledge of him is wonderful, right. So God knows the individual. And for the psalmist here, that knowledge that God has of him is something to be thought of as a good thing, something to be thought of as a good thing, something to be thought of as a wonderful thing. But, as we've expressed in other ways.

Speaker 1: 13:11

Right, sometimes that idea can be frightening, where, for some people, if you were to tell them a common phrase like this, you know and you might hear this in non-religious circles as well Someone will be confronted with something that they're doing in life and they'll go hey, you know what? Only God can judge me. And that is a true thing to understand and a frightening thing, or should be a frightening thing, because God's judgment of the individual accounts for everything about the individual. There's a difference between being judged by just your outward appearance, right? Some of us are well-trained well-trained in being able to put on the right outward appearances. We can put on the right faces. We need to. We can do the right things begrudgingly, but we do the right things.

Speaker 1: 14:07

But inwardly, something else might be going on. Inwardly, you might be feeling a hatred towards someone. I mean, this is a very common thing. Even just yesterday at work, one of my coworkers was upset at one of my managers and just yes, okay, just nodded their head and said yeah, but inwardly they were like seething with anger and told me man, I just hate this person right now. And you can have that tension and to say only God can judge me, can be a frightening thing, because God doesn't just see the outward appearance as we think about, like even the story of David being picked by God. Everyone looks at the outward appearance, but God knows the heart right, and God knows everything, the good and the bad. And if we were to put that on a scale, I think maybe in some seasons of life we'd have more good. But in a lot of seasons of life we'd probably have a lot of things that we're suppressing, a lot of anger or aggression or bitterness that we're suppressing, and God knows those things right.

Speaker 1: 15:21

So is it a good thing that God knows us completely? Is it a good thing to be really known by an all-knowing God who will one day, we believe, stand before and face his judgment? But our God is not just a judging God. He is a gracious God, right. He carries a balance of his justice and his grace together. Not everyone does, Not everyone does. I've heard it expressed in this way that society is almost like God in this manner that it is judging everything that you do. Yet, unlike God, society, the people around you, may not have that same level of grace that God has for you as he enacts his justice right. For others, they just see you and want to judge. But for God, he knows all and will judge you, but also is more gracious and more forgiving than anyone else that you can meet right. And so the psalmist can say your knowledge of me, as compared to the knowledge that another person might have of you, your knowledge of me, god, is too wonderful for me. It's a good thing. And yet it can be a little scary, right, because sometimes we still try to distance ourselves, hide ourselves from God.

Speaker 1: 16:58

You might think of the story of Jonah. Jonah actually thinks he can run away from God. Right, he says God is leading me. This way, I am going to go away from him and away from the direction he's calling me towards. Jonah's called north east, towards Nineveh, and he runs out west as far as he can get right, and God, even in the treacherous waters, is there, present with him, and calls him back in. He cannot flee from God's presence, and that's what we find in the second section of our psalm today, that the Lord searches out the p I'm picking up in verse seven when shall I go from your spirit? Where shall I flee from your presence? Right, and they're almost kind of these rhetorical questions that you already know the answer to. Where can I go from you? Nowhere. Where can I flee? Nowhere. If I go up to the highest of highs, the heavens you're there. If I go to the lowest of lows, in Sheol Sheol is kind of the place where the dead go, whether it's six feet deep in the ground or whether it's the bottom of the ocean, that is the lowest of lows, and God is present in the highest of highs and the skies and the heavens, and he is present with his people in the lowest of lows.

Speaker 1: 18:31

It doesn't matter where the psalmist runs to, where the psalmist tries to maybe escape from God's all seeing eye, god will still search him out. And now some people see this section as primarily kind of a statement about God's omnipresence. Right, the first section God's all-knowing, he's omniscient. Now this section he's omnipresent, he's present everywhere, he is everywhere. But I don't think that's the emphasis of the passage. I think the emphasis is that because God is everywhere, that means he is knowing the psalmist, anywhere the psalmist can go to. The focus is still on God's ever-present and all-knowing knowledge of the psalmist. There isn't any place where the psalmist can run to where God is not there.

Speaker 1: 19:21

And verse 9 continues that idea. Right, if I take the wings of the morning or if I dwell in the furthest parts of the sea. Now, the analogy, the metaphor that's being used here might not be evident on the surface. When you think about it it's pretty clear. Where does the sun rise in the morning? What are the wings of the morning? It comes from the east. And if you're in Israel, what lies directly west of Israel? The sea, yeah, the sea, right. So when he says, if I take the wings of the morning, if I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, that's his way of saying anywhere from the east to the west, as far as I can run in one direction, as far as I can go in the other direction, still, god is there with the psalmist. Even there, your hand leads me and your right hand shall hold me. There's nowhere that he can run to, where God will not search him out and know him as he is. But this part in verse 11 and 12, I think for me kind of changes slightly in tone. These are all kind of these far expressions the highest of highs, lowest of lows, first of the east, first of the west, and maybe this is a metaphor too, but I feel a slight tone change If I say right, if I say surely the darkness can cover me.

Speaker 1: 20:52

Now, when I was young, when I was young, I kind of struggled with a bit of depression and amidst that, the furthest extreme moments I had in that, and I kind of debated sharing this because I'm not in this place anymore but I kind of had a little bit of suicide ideation at some points. And there are certain things that people do who kind of feel those thoughts, and one of those things is they sometimes try to distance themselves from other. And that was something I remember. At one particular point in my life I felt that where I wanted to distance myself from the people that loved me and I wanted to do things to make them upset, because I felt like it would be potentially easier to not be present and not hurt the people that I love if they were upset with me. If the people felt distanced from me, if the people felt upset or angry towards me, maybe they wouldn't feel my absence.

Speaker 1: 22:10

And the psalmist here is expressing something of maybe trying to hide, trying to distance himself, and maybe it's still this kind of rhetorical language of there's nowhere I can go from you. But due to the switch in the length and the switch in the tone of this section, I kind of get the impression that he feels this a little more deeply. I kind of get the impression that he feels this a little more deeply. Surely the darkness can cover me and the light about me be night. Maybe I can really put myself at an arm's distance, maybe I can really hide myself from God, really hide myself from God.

Speaker 1: 23:06

And then, in verse 12, he says what is true about God? That even in darkness it's not dark to God. And we're drawn back to this long imagery used throughout the scriptures, of just light and dark. Light is knowledge, light is revealing, light exposes, darkness hides. Darkness is where you want to be if you're doing evil. Darkness is where evil is birthed. And so maybe you try to hide yourself in darkness because you don't want to be seen, you don't want to be known, you want to be hidden. But none of that hides us from God's love and from God's eye. God still, even in darkness, can see, even in the places where we try to push God out of our lives, whether it's due to our own sin, whether it's due to our own fear that God will not accept us or love us when he sees the depths of our sin. God is still knowing.

Speaker 1: 24:28

And verse 13 through 16 kind of continues this idea, where he says for and you'll notice that word, for it's a conjunction kind of means because right, and I think it kind of supports this statement we see in verse 12. Even the darkness is not dark to you. Dot dot dot. Because I know this about you, because I know that you are the one who formed me in the darkness of my mother's womb. You were the one who formed me in the darkness of my mother's womb, in the place where I was hidden and in secret from all else, from all people. Even there you were present. You were there in the darkness. And not only were you there, you were crafting me in this place of darkness, in this place of darkness. It's how God created the world Out of darkness, god shaped the world, god spoke light over the world and he does the same for the psalmist in his birth. You formed my inward parts. You knitted me together, my inward parts, you knitted me together.

Speaker 1: 25:45

This means that God has been there with the psalmist for the entirety of the psalmist's life, that God not only knows the psalmist, but created the psalmist and formed the psalmist to be who he is. So it's not just that God knows you as you are and yet still loves you, but it's actually that God made you as you are and thus knows you as you are and thus loves you as you are, because it is God who made you to be who you are, because it is God who made you to be who you are. If you are a louder and obnoxiouser personality, god made you that way. If you are quieter, tamer, shyer, god made you that way. If you have a tendency to be annoying to your peers, that doesn't matter, because God gave you that person. He made you as you are.

Speaker 1: 26:50

And the psalmist again takes a moment to praise God for this about him. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works, which, in this moment, in this moment in the text, what are the works of God? You, you and your mother's womb is God's work. Right Earlier, in verse six, he says the knowledge I have of your knowledge of me is too wonderful for me. And now he's saying your works of creating me is too wonderful for me. And again we see here, just as in verse six.

Speaker 1: 27:32

In verse six, the psalmist knows God's knowledge, and now here he again expresses this in verse 14, knowledge. And now here he again expresses this in verse 14. My soul knows it very well, knows the depths of your knowledge of me through your creation of me. Why? Because my frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. I wasn't hidden from you. Many of you know this that we have a one-year-old and that Michaela is again pregnant with our second child on the way and I think, from where she's still at physically, even though she's I think we're 12 weeks along, her body is doing very good at hiding, hiding the baby, right, and you wouldn't be able to tell, looking at her, that she is pregnant yet. And yet, in this place of being hidden, in this place of being held in secret, none of that is hidden from God, because God is and even notice the choice of words here right, the expressions aren't. He just created me, he formed me, he knitted me, I was intricately woven, right, it's this expression of an artist creating a masterpiece.

Speaker 1: 29:00

I, in the past, have dove into the arts, into writing songs, and I can tell you, when I am trying to write a song, I am contemplating every word I put down and editing and re-editing and then kind of trying to come to a finished place. And even when I'm done, sometimes I look at it and I go that's not a good song. I got to toss that and try again, right, there's a whole process to creating a thing and that's how the psalmist is expressing God's creation of him. I was intricately woven by you and even notice this expression right In the depths of the earth. Well, you're not being formed underground, you're being formed in your mother's womb, and yet the expression is in the furthest depths of the depths.

Speaker 1: 29:52

Your eyes saw my unformed substance. Right Over the course of time, as you were growing in your mother's womb, you begin to grow your limbs, you begin to grow the parts of you that are now you today. But at one point those didn't exist and God literally pulled them out of you and let them grow into what they are now, into what you are now, who you are now. Your eyes saw my unformed substance. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me when, as yet, there were none of them. My wife shared this with me a long, long time ago. My wife did not grow up in the church and when she became a Christian, I remember her telling me about remembering back to certain moments in her life where she recognized in hindsight that God had always been there with her, even when she didn't understand it in the moment.

Speaker 1: 31:03

Right, and I can think back to particular moments in my life where, as you're experiencing them, you don't really know what's happening. As you're experiencing them, you might feel disarray, you might feel confused about why certain things happen the way they do. And yet, when you believe in God, there's this kind of way that you can look back at your life and recognize this thread of where God has been working through your life and giving you a conversation here and giving you a reflecting moment here, giving you a song or a movie here which sparked a thought for you, and all these long string of events led you to where you are with God now, and in those moments you don't see God. But once you do get to that place where you do see God as he is and being not just real, existing, but actually present in the life of people and present in your individual life. Then you start to think about your life very differently. Then getting let go from a job isn't just someone doing this to you, but God is somewhere involved in that process. A person that you trust. Using your trust against you is no longer just about that person breaking your trust or hurting you. Somewhere in that process God is still present. God is still counting out the days and laying them all out In Psalm 90,. Moses is the writer of Psalm 90. He says teach me to number my days, teach me to understand how you are crafting the start and the end of my life. And that perspective on how God is present in your life changes the way you think about your individual moments.

Speaker 1: 33:03

Right now in our Bible study we're going through the book of Revelation and we were just studying about the. We're just at the midpoint in the book where you get to the dragon and the beasts, and something we were seeing last week is that the beasts are commissioned by the dragon to attack the people of God. But we also see that God is still in control and God allows for these beasts in Revelation to attack his people. God still has a sovereign overlook over everything that happens to his people. God still has a sovereign overlook over everything that happens to his people. In your book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me Before you experienced them. God has laid them out. He knows everything that's going to happen to you. He knows everything that you are going to do, and it's that level of knowledge, it's that level of being searched out and known by someone God that is deeper than the type of knowledge that anyone else can have for us. It's more intimate and personal and individual than what we could ever experience from anyone else.

Speaker 1: 34:27

Sometimes, when I'm really like in my head a lot and thinking a lot and sometimes thinking is a good thing for me, sometimes it's a really bad thing for me but sometimes, when I'm really in my head, I just I can think a whole idea in three seconds that will take me 10 minutes to explain and I just feel like if I were to really share everything about what's going on inside of me to someone else, it would take me a long time and maybe for that reason sometimes we don't want to share with others because like and I get this feeling all the time, man if I really unload on this person and let them know what's going on inside of me and in my life. It will be too burdensome for them. My thoughts are too much for me. Can I really handle all of your deepest thoughts inside of my head as well? That's a lot of thoughts, right, and if I were to share everything about me with someone else, I feel like it would just crush that person, Like there isn't a way that these other person could sustain everything there is about me, and God sustains and knows everything about us individually, everything we feel, every thought that we have, that we understand and don't have to explain, because we know the full context of our thoughts and the full context of our lives.

Speaker 1: 35:57

Explain because we know the full context of our thoughts and the full context of our lives. He understands all of that about us and it's the reason why Paul will say in Romans what we read earlier today, right, that sometimes we don't even know what to pray, and the spirit groans on our behalf with groanings that aren't understandable in words, cannot be expressed in words Because, man, sometimes if I were to just break down crying right now, you'd probably think what is wrong. Let's try to find out what's going on in his life and try to address it, try to help him through that. And I wouldn't maybe all wouldn't feel the desire to share that, but there's a comfort in that you can break down crying and God knows why. God knows why. He knows everything about what you're feeling. He knows everything about what you're going through. He knows you're tired, he knows you're hungry and he knows your pain. He understands us deeply and has searched us out.

Speaker 1: 37:16

And that brings us to our last section of the psalm, that the psalmist at this point expresses his trust and allegiance to the all-knowing Lord Verse 17,. Another praise rant right. Verse 16, verse 14, sorry. Verse 6, verse 14, and now again in verse 17. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God, your thoughts which, as we've seen in this psalm, are not just thoughts about the world, they're thoughts about me. How precious to me are your thoughts that you have about me, o God. How vast is the sum of them? If I would count them, they are more than the sand, and we have an allusion here to Genesis 22, where you have this expression that God is going to make much of Abraham's descendants right. There'll be as numerous as the stars in the sky, as numerous as the sand on the beach that cannot be counted. So God will grow the people of Abraham, right. And now that promise, that Abrahamic promise, is being alluded to through this statement. But now it's not just being said about all the descendants that you will bear for me, all the blessings you'll make of me and my family, but it's all. The thoughts that God will have about you are more numerous than the sand on the beach, on all the beaches. Right, if I would try to count them, they're more than the sand. I can't count all the thoughts that you have about me.

Speaker 1: 38:46

Oh God, I can do a really good job at thinking a lot about myself, as I'm sure many of us can do. We can kind of see ourselves as the main character in our lives. And how could you not? Right, because you are experiencing everything about you and nothing about anyone else, in an interior, subjective manner. Right, I know everything about my thoughts. I've thought them, they're mine. I know my feelings, I'm the one who's feeling them.

Speaker 1: 39:14

And yet God has more thoughts about us than we can count. And of all the thoughts I can have, I'll forget most of them. And yet God has so many thoughts for us, so many more than we could ever count. He knows us to the fullest capacity. He knows us to the fullest capacity, and while we might feel this tension, this fear of can anyone know me to that extent and yet still love me? What do we find at the end of verse 18? I awake and I'm still with you. You have not left me, when you knew everything about me, right? Even though you have all these thoughts of me and you understand me more deeply than anyone could understand me, more deeply than I can understand myself. It's not a dream. When I wake up from all this, you're still beside me. I wake up and I'm still with you because you haven't left me, and so the part of the psalm that everyone wishes was kind of crossed out right.

Speaker 1: 40:27

As I've said already, I'm kind of a music person, and in music-minded peoples who are fanboying over music, we have this term, this acronym, a-o-t-y, a-o-t. Album of the Year, right, and every year I got to think through what are my top five albums that came out this year or something right, and one of the things that always happens with the greatest of greatest albums is there's always that one song on the album that you're just like. That song brought it from a 10 out of 10 to a 9 out of 10, because I don't really like that song, right, and for this psalm. This psalm is like hands down one of the best psalms and one of people's favorite psalms, except for these four verses, right here, right, it's a near flawless. You know, run, until you hit this God slay the wicked, and you're like, no, you have that in so many other Psalms, why do you have it in this one? This one's my favorite. It had potential and I'm going to show you, hopefully, why this little four verse run is actually essential to the psalm.

Speaker 1: 41:40

First of all, notice, as compared to other psalms which are good and have a purpose in the Psalter, sometimes the psalmist will say God, slay my enemies and will give 15 verses on on God, punish them. They're wicked. That is not actually what we have here. If you notice verse 19,. Right, oh, that you would slay the wicked, oh, God. And then he turns and speaks to the wicked oh, men of blood, depart from me, right? So God, kill them, remove them. And then he says you peoples, remove yourself from me. They speak against you, right, they speak against you, god. These aren't enemies that are speaking against the psalmist, as we have in other cases and other places. These are God's enemies.

Speaker 1: 42:38

And notice what the psalmist is doing. He's saying I want nothing to do with them, right? I do not want to be associated with the enemies of God, right? The wicked, the men of blood. I don't want to have anything to do with them. Why does he want to wipe his hands clean? Is he trying to wipe his hands clean because he's saying I'm innocent, god, search me and know me because I'm innocent. No, he's saying wipe them away, remove them from me because I'm allegiant to you and I don't want anything to do with the people who hate you, right? They speak against you with malicious intent. I don't want to be a part of that. Remove them. Your enemies take your name in vain. They break that third commandment. I don't want anything to do with them. Do I not hate them, god? Do I not loathe those who rise up against you? Your enemies, God, I do not want to associate with. I want to wipe my hands clean because I do not want to be associated with those who hate you, because I love you.

Speaker 1: 43:45

This is an expression of allegiance, this is an expression of loyalty, this is an expression of the psalmist's love for God, and that final verse in verse 22 kind of gives us that to the fullest extent. I hate them with complete hatred, with the total hatred that I can consume. That's the amount that I have for your enemies, god. I am absolutely against the people that are against you and I count them as my own enemies. Right, and you might think about a statement like that of allegiance that we find in, like Ruth, right, where Ruth will say to Naomi wherever you're going, I'm going. Your land, your land, your people, my people, your God, my God, your enemies, my enemies. That's what the psalmist is saying here. Right, it's a statement of I'm doing nothing with them, I want them away from me, I do not want to associate with them.

Speaker 1: 44:54

This isn't the place for you know, kind of articulating, loving your enemy. This is a place for articulating I am totally on God's side and I am willing to suffer the consequences of being on God's team. Right, being on God's team, as we see in later parts in Revelation sorry, in the Bible, but especially in Revelation, as it's on my mind a lot lately In Revelation God's people are tied, are united with Jesus Christ and that means, as Jesus Christ suffered for righteousness, that means his people will also suffer for righteousness. Right, as Christ died, so his people will suffer and die. That's the cost of being tied down and loyal to God, being faithful to God, and that's what the psalmist wants. That's how he wants to live his life. I want to suffer the consequences of being on your team.

Speaker 1: 45:57

You have a lot of enemies. Let them come at me too. Right, because I'm with you now. Right, hopefully. You have a lot of enemies. Let them come at me too. Right, because I'm with you now, right, hopefully. Uh, you have not gotten into many physical fights. I'm sure some people have gotten in more fights in here than others. Um, and the thing about being in fights is sometimes there's multiple people involved.

Speaker 1: 46:16

I remember one time I was at a middle school church camp with my youth group and everyone was going out to the main you know kind of chapel session and a friend of mine that I had been getting close to that week. We were in the restrooms and these two other people from our youth group were also in the restrooms guys, of course, and they were not buddy-buddy with my friend and I remember they were in the restrooms. Keep in mind, everyone has deserted that area because they were all going to the main chapel session and we were nowhere near that. We were in the apartments, kind of dorms off to like you know, far away from the campus where the chapel was being held. So at that point I was like there's probably no one else in this building right now and these two guys came in and they want to fight my friend and I can't let him just get beat up in front of me and I'm not going to run away. So if this is what we're going to do, I guess this is what we're going to do. And I was pretty terrified.

Speaker 1: 47:21

I was a pretty small middle schooler, I don't know, maybe 5'1", 5'2", something, I can't remember. I was shorter and thinner and I wouldn't say scrawny, but I wasn't big at all. And these two other guys were older than me and bigger than me and I remember just thinking that's what I thought, just okay. And luckily they started shouting these guys and they started getting in each other's face and breathing hard and I'm like it's about to go down. But because they were shouting so loud, guess who was actually still in the dorms and heard us? Our youth pastor, thank God. And he runs into the bathroom and splits us up.

Speaker 1: 48:07

And the rest of the week was a little weird. But in that moment I decided your enemies my enemies. I don't really want anything to do with these guys, but I am tied down to you, my friend, and if being tied down to you in this moment means this, then that's what it means. And I did not get in a fight, mom, no worries. That's what the psalmist is expressing here Allegiance to God, commitment to God, trust in God. And why would he not right? Because if I were to make myself known to people, really as I am, there's a fair share of them who, if they weren't my enemies before, they would become my enemies because of what they know about me. But this god, this lord, knows me totally and has befriended me, invited me to his family, invited me to his table. Yeah, I'll take his side. Yeah, I will face off anyone else. I have to face off because I'm tied down to this one, because he really does know me and he really still does love me.

Speaker 1: 49:19

And so we end with these last two verses, and these two verses kind of repeat some of the idea that we found at the start, verse 23,. Search me, o God, and know my heart. And how did the psalm start? It started by saying O Lord, you have searched me and known me. And where earlier he explained the depths of God's knowledge of him, now he's saying I want you to, I'm inviting you to search me Anywhere I might run to, I want you to follow me. Anything that could be known about me. I want you to know about me. I want you to know about me. I want you to know my heart, in all of its mess ups, in all of its wickedness, in all of its attempts to try to be good. I want you to know all of it about me. Right? It's not a statement about God doesn't know these things. No, we've already stated and made clear that God does know the psalmist to this extent. But now the psalmist gladly welcomes it and invites the Lord to know him. In this way, the psalmist trusts in God and invites God in because he has recognized the depths of God's goodness and the depths of God's love for him.

Speaker 1: 50:39

And I think that's what should happen for a person who is confronted by the goodness of God, by the faithfulness of a loving God, is this God does not abandon me when I do a lot bad. This God does not abandon me when I try to run away from him. He actually seeks me out. Abandon me when I try to run away from him. He actually seeks me out. And when you think of this in comparison to the love that we try to replace it with the love that we try to find in people, the love that we try to find from people who don't even know us, that we want people's approval who know nothing about us, it's ridiculous. This God knows everything about us individually, loves us, is with us, is tied down to us and will not leave us.

Speaker 1: 51:28

So search me, god, know my heart, try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any grievous way in me. If there's anything about me that grieves you, that grieves the Holy Spirit within me, I want you to reveal that to me and lead me in the way everlasting right. I'm not afraid to show you my wickedness now. I'm not afraid to show you my sins. I'm not afraid to show you my mistakes. In fact, I'm inviting you, lord, to seek that out in me. See all of my mistakes. That's why we confess as we do earlier in the service right. That's why we make attempts consistently to put ourselves before God and say here I am. God right, because as we extend our arms out to God with open hands and say this is who I am, because as we extend our arms out to God with open hands and say this is who I am, he extends himself to us and says here I am for you. God is reaching out towards us so we can reach out to him and say this is who I am.

Speaker 1: 52:32

These are all the bad things about me. I am willing to show them to you, even though I couldn't hide it from you if I wanted to. But I want you to know them about me. I am giving them over to you because I want you to see me and I want you to change me. See, if there's any grievous way in me and he's not saying that because he doesn't have grievous ways. He's saying that because he does see these things about me and lead me in the way to life. Me and lead me in the way to life. Lead me to you, lead me in the way everlasting that leads not to just a short, pleasurable life, but a long, lasting, joy filled, loving, pure, good life. See me, see my sins, change me so that I can be with you in an everlasting life.

Speaker 1: 53:27

It's a very Christian psalm, if you think about it, isn't it? Right here I am, I'm confessing my sins to you so that you can change me and lead me to you and lead me to life. That's our psalm, right? A God who really does know us, really does love us when we strive for that from others who don't give that to us. And the response that we find in the psalm is the response we ought to live in as well, as the psalmist can think about God's love for him and say because you know me and love me, I will commit myself to you. I will endure the hardships of being on your side and I will put myself out there for you to change me. That's what we're supposed to do as well. God, I'm going to tie myself, unite myself to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord who suffered for his righteousness, the Lord who suffered on behalf of his enemies. That's who I'm gonna tie myself to, because you're a good God, a trustworthy God, a faithful God and a God that will lead me into the way of life, and I trust you so deeply that I'm willing to stand at arm's length from everyone else who will push you away.

Speaker 1: 54:43

Let's close in prayer. Lord, god, we thank you for your word given to us. God, we thank you for your scriptures that are good, filled with your riches, filled with your heart, filled with your love, filled with you. Lord. God, we thank you for this psalm in particular, which reminds us, god, of your love for us and begs of us to choose you. God, we want to choose you now and always in our life.